NSA Spying: The Three Pillars of Government Trust Have Fallen

Photo: Bernard Goldbach and the ACLU

BlacklistedNewsWith each recent revelation about the NSA’s spying programs government
officials have tried to reassure the American people that all three
branches of government—the Executive branch, the Judiciary branch, and
the Congress—knowingly approved these programs and exercised rigorous oversight over them. President Obama recited this
talking point just last week, saying:“as President, I’ve taken steps
to make sure they have strong oversight by all three branches of
government and clear safeguards to prevent abuse and protect the rights
of the American people.” With these three pillars of oversight in
place, the argument goes, how could the activities possibly be illegal
or invasive of our privacy?

Today, the Washington Post confirmed that
two of those oversight pillars—the Executive branch and the court
overseeing the spying, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA
court)—don’t really exist.The third pillar came down slowly over the
last few weeks, with Congressional revelations about the limitations on
its oversight, including what Representative Sensennbrenner called “rope
a dope” classified briefings. With this, the house of government trust
has fallen, and it’s time to act. Join the over 500,000 people demanding an end to the unconstitutional NSA spying.First, the Executive. After a review of internal NSA audits of the spying programs provided by Edward Snowden, the Post lays out—in
stark detail—that the claims of oversight inside the Executive Branch
are empty. The article reveals that an internal NSA audit not shown to
Congress, the President, or the FISA Court detailed thousands of
violations where the NSA collected, stored, and accessed American’s
communications content and other information. In one story, NSA analysts
searched for all communications containing the Swedish manufacturer
Ericsson and “radio” or “radar.” What’s worse: the thousands of
violations only include the NSA’s main office in Maryland—not the
other—potentially hundreds—of other NSA offices across the country. And
even more importantly, the documents published by the Post reveal
violations increasing every year. The news reports and documents are in
direct contrast to the repeated assertions by President Obama (video),General James Clapper (video), and General Keith Alexander (video)
that the US government does not listen to or look at Americans’ phone
calls or emails. So much for official pronouncements that oversight by
the Executive was “extensive” and “robust.”Second, the FISA Court. The Post presents a second article in
which the Chief Judge of the FISA Court admits that the court is unable
to act as a watchdog or stop the NSA’s abuses: “The FISC is forced to
rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the
Court,” its chief, US District Judge Reggie B. Walton,
said in a written statement. “The FISC does not have the capacity to
investigate issues of noncompliance.” Civil liberties and privacy
advocates have long said that the FISA Court is a rubber stamp when
it comes to the spying, but this is worse—this is the Court admitting
that it cannot conduct the oversight the President and others have
claimed it is doing. So much for claims by officials from the White House (video), NSA, DOJ, and Intelligence Committee members of Congress that the FISA Court is another strong pillar of oversight.Third, the Congress. Last week, Representative Sensenbrenner complained that
“the practice of classified briefings are a ‘rope-a-dope operation’ in
which lawmakers are given information and then forbidden from speaking
out about it.” Members of Congress who do not serve on the Intelligence
Committees in the both the House and Senate have had difficulty in obtaining documents
about the NSA spying. Last week, it was even uncovered that the
Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, failed to provide freshmen
members of Congress vital documents about the NSA’s activities during a
key vote to reapprove the spying. Senators Wyden and Udall have been
desperately trying to tell the American people what is going on, but
this year the House Intelligence committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight has not met once and the Senate Intelligence committee has met publicly only twice.One, two, three pillars of government, all cited repeatedly as the
justification for our trust and all now obviously nonexistent or failing
miserably. It’s no surprise Americans are turning against the government’s explanations.The pattern is now clear and it’s getting old. With each new
revelation the government comes out with a new story for why things are
really just fine, only to have that assertion demolished by the next
revelation. It’s time for those in government who want to rebuild the
trust of the American people and others all over the world to come clean
and take some actual steps to rein in the NSA. And if they don’t, the
American people and the public, adversarial courts, must force change
upon it.We still think the first step ought to be a truly independent investigatory body that
is assigned to look into the unconstitutional spying. It must be
empowered to search, read and compel documents and testimony, must be
required to give a public report that only redacts sensitive operational
details, and must suggest specific legislation and regulatory changes
to fix the problem—something like the Church Committee or maybe even the 9/11 Commission. The President made a mockery of this idea recently, by initially handing control of the “independent” investigation he announced in his press conference to the man who most famously lied to Congress and the American people about the spying, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.The three pillars of American trust have fallen. It’s time to get a
full reckoning and build a new house from the wreckage, but it has to
start with some honesty.